How To Build A Home

Heading into Christmas but here’s a post-Thanksgiving update. We didn’t feast or celebrate. We toiled. And the crew was cooked after a couple hard days of working in the cold. “Soul crushers” my guy calls them, those bitter days when your work gloves are soaked and your hands throb all the while. 

As mentioned elsewhere, we’re constructing a house in the woods of central Oregon. 

The process of creating your own shelter is kinda incomprehensible to the modern human (i.e. me). Dreaming up plans for the place, we prioritized the simple, durable and timeless over the modern and stylish. Now that we’re building, it’s anything but simple.

When I think of how much we have left to do, I die of overwhelm. But like anything else tough or easy or even in the middle, you have to put one foot in front of the other — one board atop the next. It’s our Rome, our Stonehenge, our Egyptian Pyramids.

I’m a novice on the construction site, which is fun—I like the work. But, I have to focus and keep my eyes peeled so I don’t fall off something, hit somebody over the head with something, ruin something or accidentally cut something off. 

Amidst staying sharp, I also think a lot. The local radio spins ’90s jams. “Head Like A Hole” — Trent Reznor scented with snow and sawdust. Memories of freshman year float to the surface of my mental lake. Winter days in a small mountain town, high on a cocktail of confusion and hormones. Chewing Kodiak. Throwing up in a laundry bin. Breaking Frank Rivera’s heart. Riding shotgun in my big sister’s car. Woefully under-dressed in a Champion hoody and size 43 jeans staring up at a cold, star-blasted sky. I re-live entire eras between an 82” cut and handing lumber up to Mark on the roof.

Guys, I’ve always been looking for something and I never did find it. Hard work of the physical variety does settle my unquiet heart. The last time I took on a labor this kind was back when I decided to open an indoor concrete skatepark in the middle of a recession. Those good ol’ days of scraping money and shoveling sandbags now radiate the warmth of nostalgia. Someday, I know these soul crushers will too.